June 16, 2015

Grexit and the Melian Dialogue

The following article originally appeared in E!Sharp on June 1, 2015. An excerpt is below and the full text can be accessed here.

The Melian Dialogue – the dramatization of a meeting
between delegates from the city-state Athens and the island of Melos in 415 BCE
– is one of the most famous passages of Thucydides’ History of the
Peloponnesian War. It has long been a favourite of students of politics and
rhetoric and, more recently, of game theorists. Greece’s finance minister, the
economist Yanis Varoufakis, is well-versed in the text, and even offered his
own translation in a 1997 game theoretical discussion. It is all the more
reason that the Melian Dialogue – with its ruminations on power, morality, and
rational choice – should be required reading for European policymakers seeking
a resolution to the Greek debt crisis, particularly given the failure of the
recent round of dialogue between Greece and its creditors. Below is an abridged
version, liberally updated for contemporary relevance:

The Greeks, who were increasingly friendly with Russia,
would not submit to Brussels like the other Europeans, and had assumed an
attitude of open hostility. Upon receiving the Europeans, led by three known as
the Troika, the Greek representatives said: ‘These talks, in and of themselves,
are unobjectionable. But your calls for austerity and structural reforms are
too far advanced, as if you have already made up your minds. All we can
reasonably expect from this negotiation is conflict or servitude.’

‘There is certainly no need to repeat how we got into
this mess, nor harp upon your past follies,’ replied the Europeans. ‘But let us
focus on what is now feasible. You know as well as we do that right and wrong
are only in question between equals in power. The strong do what they can and
the weak suffer what they must.’ [Read more]